Can you believe Fall Festival is only 20 days away? I certainly can’t! We are actually packing up our offices next week to move into the George R. Brown Convention Center, so wanted to be sure to share the Make It University! schedule before I pack up my prayer flags.

Want to take an hour-long workshop from one of today’s top quilters and fiber artists? Make It University!(TM) is back in Houston! Learn a new skill (or two) and make a whimsical project as a show keepsake or gift for someone. No pre-enrollment; just pay $10 at the door (first-come, first-served). Tickets available all day (for that day’s sessions only) until the class space is sold out. Schedule is subject to change.

Make It University!(TM) is located in the middle of the exhibitor section, right across from the Information Booth on “Main Street.”

Wednesday, October 30 (Preview Night)

5:30-6:30 Sweet Sakura Flower Brooch – Julie Creus

Make an Asian-inspired Sweet Sakura Fabric Flower Brooch to complete in just one hour and show off to all of your friends!

7:00-8:00 Text Messages – Enid Weichselbaum

Using scrapbooking letters and textile paint, learn to create small quilts that really communicate!

8:30-9:30 Get Pet-Ty! Playful Pet Postcards – Pokey Bolton

Have a frolicking good time in this workshop as we create, stitch, and stamp fabric postcards that have gone to the dogs (and cats).

Thursday, October 31

10:30-11:30 Embellishing with Foiling – Barb Forrister

Add a little sparkle to your next project by embellishing with foil­­—a great way to add shine to your creations!

12:00-1:00 Label It! – Leslie Jenison and Michele Muska

Join this fun and hands-on labeling workshop where you’ll see examples of easy and creative quilt labels, and then with supplies provided, create your own unique label for your quilt!

Don’t forget to stop by the Trading Post at Make It University!(TM) where you can trade your ATCs (artist trading cards), prayer flags, mug rugs, and inchies. Bring and trade as many items as you’d like. This is a very lively section of the show floor, and a great way to share new quilt, surface design, and embellishment ideas with other quilters!

Want to make a pet postcard for a worthy cause to save animals’ lives at the upcoming Quilt Festival to benefit Friends For Life? Pet postcards are a snap to make and as varied as art quilts in terms of styles, techniques, and materials; the only guidelines are they are 4″ x 6″ in size, and typically have a piece of card stock glued onto the back in case someone wants to send it through the mail (although you certainly don’t have to have card stock).

So flex some creative muscle, and create and donate your pet postcard to a worthy charity! I have shared directions for how I made mine, but other examples of other styles are featured below my instructions to give you a little more inspiration!

Materials:

• Picture of pooch or another beloved pet

• Image editing software or a smart phone app that is able to convert pictures to a black and white photocopy

• 4″ x 6″ piece of cardstock for the backing

• 4″ x 6″ piece of stiff interfacing such as Peltex or Timtex

• Fabric scraps for your postcard composition

• Fusible web

• Light box or a window with strong outdoor lighting

• Water-soluble transfer pen or pencil (or a black felt-tip marker if you want the traced lines of your pet to be visible)

• Iron and ironing pad

• Sewing machine with free-motion capabilities

Directions:

Find or take a digital image of your pet(s) that will make a good composition for your fabric postcard. I chose this picture I took on my iPhone of Clarence and Nellie, my two adopted dogs I got from Friends For Life, and thought it would make a good vertical composition (without the muddy paw prints).

Convert your photo to a black and white photocopy using image editing software such as Photoshop® or one of the many apps available on smart phones.

Apply fusible webbing to the backs of the fabric scraps that you would like to use for your postcard.

Print the photocopy of your picture and tape it to a light box or window.

Tape your fabric with the fusible webbing on top of the photocopy and trace your pet image onto your fabric. Be sure to include all of the defining body parts, and not just the animal’s silhouette.

Cut out your pet image.

Decide if you want to do anything to the background fabric before you fuse your pet image on top, and fuse the background fabric to the interfacing. Note: I chose to mimic the wooden slats on my porch by simply thread sketching lines, then added a polka-dot doormat in the back.

Place the cut-out pet images on top and fuse.

Free-motion stitch over the traced lines of the pet.

Place the card stock on the back of the postcard composition and satin-stitch along all four sides.

On the back, sign your name and title your postcard.

Here are some other examples of pet postcards I have received recently:

Guide dog cutie by Lisa Chin

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Coffee-loving pooch by Jamie Fingal

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“Marti Says Hello” by Marsha Leith

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” Buddies” by Mod Quilter, Jen Eskridge

For our upcoming Festival Pet Project event, here’s how you can help:

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1. Make as many 4″ x 6″ fabric postcards (that are no more than 1/8″ in thickness) as you would like to be featured and sold at International Quilt Festival this upcoming fall.

2. We want you to get pet-ty! We encourage animal-themed fabric postcards but we certainly welcome and would appreciate other themes as well, such as abstracts, landscapes, floral pieces, etc. The point is to raise as much funds as we can! On the back side of the fabric postcard, please sign your name and title your postcard. (Contact information is optional.)

3. We will sell the postcards for $20 each at Festival, and all of the proceeds will go to Friends For Life.

4. These postcards can be mailed to the Quilts, Inc. office no later than Tuesday, October 22, 2013. Please note: this is a receive-by date! We will of course accept postcards during Quilt Festival but want to have a large starting bank of postcards so would love it if you mailed them in advance!

5. You can mail as many fabric postcards as you would like, but please place them in a padded envelope. This way they will stay in pristine condition to be displayed at Festival.

Fall is officially upon us, which means Fall Festival is just around the corner! Who (besides me) is excited and counting down the days?

Two prayer flags I have made so far to ring in autumn, my favorite season. I dyed a vintage table runner, and cut it into several 5″-wide pieces to create individual flags.

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If you are coming to the show, not only do I hope that you are making Pet Postcards for our Pet Postcard Project fundraiser, but we also have some fun opportunities for our Trading Post, where we invite you to trade your ATCs (artist trading cards), Inchies, Mug Rugs, and Prayer Flags. Sharing a bit of your art with other show attendees is a fantastic way to explore new techniques (without committing yourself to a large quilt), and also bring home some (free!) handmade mementos by other quilters. There is no limit as to how many items you can bring and trade. There are no rules for the Trading Post, except to trade like-items at the show (i.e. if you want to trade out your Inchie you brought to the show, you must trade it for another Inchie, not an ATC, prayer flag or mug rug).

All four of these small trading projects are a snap to make, and a great way to use up scraps and embellishments. We invite everyone to use all kinds of media and techniques–don’t feel you must stick entirely to fabric!

4 Simple Projects for Trading

Prayer Flags

Prayer flags can be as sturdy or delicate as you like, but keep in mind that it is quite possible the recipient will be placing your prayer flags outside, such as hanging off the railing of a front porch. Prayer flags are celebrated and cherished for their frayed, weathered look, so feel free to upcycle those vintage table lines too worn or stained for daily use. The suggested size for this particular prayer flag trade at Fall Festival is in the range of 5″ w x 6″h, and make sure to stitch a sleeve across the top for a piece of cording or string to slip through. Some of my very favorite prayer flags are by Vivika Denegre, who challenged herself to make a prayer flag every day for the month of June a couple years ago. She recently told me that she spent just one hour each day making them, using materials she had on hand.

A sampling of Vivika Denegre’s prayer flags she made in 2011.

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Simple two-step construction instructions:

1. Cut your background fabric to size, about 5″ x 6″ for this trade, and fold over the top by about 1″ to the back. Machine stitch closed to create the sleeve at the top. Don’t worry about the fabric fraying along the sides, that’s part of the prayer flag’s charm!

2. Now the fun part: time to stitch and embellish! You are limited only by your imagination for materials and techniques. Feel free to combine paper and fabric, too!

For more prayer flag inspiration, visit Vivika’s prayer flag blog where you will find lots of inspiring examples.

ATCs (Artist Trading Cards)

ATCs give you a good excuse to use up fabric scraps and share a bit of your art with someone else. Only guidelines are they are 2.5″ x 3.5″ in size, and are signed on the back with your name, date, and contact info (if you would like the recipient to contact you).

I find it easiest to make a batch of ATCs at once, creating and machine stitching on a larger piece of background fabric that I later cut up into individual ATCs.

1. Create your larger background fabric that you will later cut up into individual 2.5″ x 3.5″ pieces. You could wholecloth dye, paint, stamp or stencil, or piece the background. (This is also a good project to use up unfinished blocks that you don’t think will ever get into a quilt.)

2. Baste the top fabric to batting or felt, cut to same size. Before cutting into individual ATCs, I like to practice my machine stitching and free-motion the background at this point.

5. Cut the card stock to size, and glue to the back. Sign and date your ATC.

Inchies

See the above instructions for creating ATCs, except the finished size is 1.5″ square. Inchies are perfect for wearables–they make terrific brooches as well as charms for bracelets and necklaces.

Mug Rugs

Mug rugs are small(ish) patchwork placemats approximately 6″-7″ in size for a cup of coffee or tea and a small snack to rest on while stitching in your studio. For a host of mug rug tutorials and styles, visit this mug rug page!

We hope you will be creating and bringing a lot of stitched art with you next month to Quilt Festival!

Just about every day now I get a package of pet postcards for our Festival Pet Project to benefit Friends for Life, Houston’s premiere no-kill animal shelter, and I thought I would show you some of the latest (you know…to get you creating and sending some in)!

French Bulldog by Helena Scheffer(Don’t you just want to smooch this pooch!?)

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“Jazz Dog” by Grace Sim (Glad this dog’s taste is more John Coltrane than Miley Cyrus.)

Some may remember that we raised more than $20,000 total last year at Quilt Festival for Friends For Life by selling hundreds of donated fabric postcards for $20 each, and this year I am hoping to far surpass that amount! We are inviting YOU for this fall’s show to make fabric postcards to help us achieve this goal.

Here’s how you can help:

1. Make as many 4″ x 6″ fabric postcards (that are no more than 1/8″ in thickness) as you would like to be featured and sold at International Quilt Festival this upcoming fall.

2. We want you to get pet-ty! We encourage animal-themed fabric postcards but we certainly welcome and would appreciate other themes as well, such as abstracts, landscapes, floral pieces, etc. The point is to raise as much funds as we can! On the back side of the fabric postcard, please sign your name and title your postcard. (Contact information is optional.)

3. We will sell the postcards for $20 each at Festival, and all of the proceeds will go to Houston-based animal shelters.

4. These postcards can be mailed to the Quilts, Inc. office no later than Tuesday, October 22, 2013. Please note: this is a receive-by date! We will of course accept postcards during Quilt Festival but want to have a large starting bank of postcards so would love it if you mailed them in advance!

5. You can mail as many fabric postcards as you would like, but please place them in a padded envelope. This way they will stay in pristine condition to be displayed at Festival.

I’m having a ball opening my mail at Quilts lately as the postcards for our second year of our Festival’s Pet Project to benefit Friends For Life, Houston’s premier no-kill animal shelter are starting to arrive. Last year we raised more than $20,000 to save animals’ lives, but I am aiming to double that amount at this fall’s show!

Some of the cards we’ve received in the last week:

Cat with pearly eyes by Jeanne Palmer Moore.

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A dog who likes fonts as much as I do: Happy button-eyed dog munching on a bone by Jeanne Palmer Moore.

A free-motioned Scottie (although some may question to be a miniature schnauzer) about to chomp on a tasty bone by Sue Bleiweiss.

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Yesterday I went to Friends For Life to drop off some posters and postcards on my lunch hour and visited with some of the animals. Above are Casanova and Romeo, two older cats who were surrendered by their owner. These sweet, docile siblings have been there for way too long, and if I didn’t have a household of critters already, I’d take them. I hope they get to enjoy their golden years in a loving home!

As I was leaving the shelter, this one kitty tried very hard to get my attention.

Almost got me.

Trying again!

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When I was leaving, I met a dog getting some 1:1 training whose name had me laughing because I thought I was the only person on the planet who had named my dog after an E Street member. Meet Clarence.

Then I went home for a quick bite for lunch and met my own Clarence (formerly Toby) that I got from Friends For Life, who was a little mad I wanted to eat my lunch in peace.

I want to thank everyone so much who stitched and/or purchased fabric postcards for our Quilt Festival Pet Project to benefit Friends For Life, Houston’s premier no-kill animal rescue and shelter program! Our initial hope was to reach $10,000 with the sale of these fabric postcards, and before the show, I was a little worried that this amount was a lofty and unrealistic goal. Well, guess what: my worrying was a waste of energy.

The postcard wall was dog-gone busy the entire show!

Amanda Schlatre and I even fetched some fabric postcards for ourselves.

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And by Sunday morning, the guesstimate of nearly 900 fabric postcards had dwindled to just 20…

…until all were adopted.

And my concern of not reaching $10,000 was for naught. When I discovered the final amount raised between the sale of the postcards and monetary donations, I wanted to leap like Lassie, bound about like Benji, and gambol like Garfield. Are you ready?

Above with Salise Shuttlesworth, Founder and Director of Friends For Life. I admire her very much for her tenacity, passion, and advocacy for all animals.

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I want to thank everyone so, so much for helping us raise this money–for making postcards, for buying them, for blogging about the project, for telling your guild members and friends, for helping in the booth, the list goes on.

Great news for future years at International Quilt Festival/Houston!

For those who did not have a chance to make fabric postcards or attend the show to purchase any, we will be doing this fabric postcard benefit again in Houston for the next two years! So go ahead and start making fabric postcards because we want to raise twice as much next year as we did this year!

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We will also have news on our accompanying Pet Project juried animal quilt exhibit to debut next year, so if you want to make a quilted animal portrait, we invite you to start stitching.

Faster than Roadrunner can outrun a rocket, my two weeks of Hilton livin’ and Houston Quilt Show lovin’ feel like they zoomed by at warp speed, and in the blink of an eye, I’m already back at Quilts headquarters, sitting still, feeling exhilarated, inspired, and yes, also a little tired.

What an incredible and whirlwind of a time this year’s International Quilt Festival/Houston experience was for me, and for the tens of thousands who attended, I hope for you as well!

I’ll be posting a few blog entries recapping Festival over this next week, and in this first edition wanted to share some pictures of our brand new Open Studios sponsored by Craftsy, fine purveyors of quality online classes from some of the best quilters in the business. We are very appreciative of their sponsorship, and I know I was among many who felt dazzled watching approximately 40 quilt artists over the course of the four days of Festival share their art as well as tips, tricks, and techniques for better quilting.

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Open Studios was located close to the entrance of the Food Court, and it was exciting watching it come together!

After Ray from TexExpo and his team rolled out the floor, they began erecting the wall panels that would create the four distinct open studios rooms for artists to quilt, stitch, embellish, and paint.

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Here my coworker Belén Timmins is sporting a classic pose in one of the windows of Open Studios just after one of the walls was completed. Problem was, we knew beforehand that these rooms needed propping…and propping quickly since the show was opening in less than 24 hours.

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After making a few trips home to grab some things from my studio, and with the help and eye of Leslie Jenison and Jamie Fingal, we decorated all of the rooms with props and hanging mechanisms for each artist to display their art for their sessions. I thought the Craftsy sign looked pretty striking!

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I especially loved the paint room with Leslie Jenison’s art cloth billowing out of paint cans.

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Some highlights…

Cheryl Sleboda was one of our debut artists to launch Open Studios this year, and demonstrated how she embellishes her quilts with LED lights. Clever girl, that Cheryl…

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Nancy Goldsworthy divulged her secrets for how to couch chunky and challenging threads to a packed audience of quilters.

Leslie Jenison showed how easy and fun it can be to create one-of-a-kind art cloth with monoprinting.

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I got to play in Open Studios, too, demo’ing some surface design techniques, and as an admirer of Lynn Krawczyk’s art, it was great fun having her as a neighbor during our sessions!

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All in all a lively time was had in this new area on the show floor, and I want to thank all of the artists for being so generous with their expertise, and to thank Craftsy for sponsoring this fun event!

In the next post I will share some very exciting news we have about the funds raised for Friends For Life with our Festival Pet Project, but in the meantime, I hope that many of us can keep those in the Northeast in our hearts and prayers as they cope with the aftermath of Sandy. If you want to help, there are a couple of quilt drives that I have been made aware of: Luana Rubin is coordinating Hurricane Sandy- 5000 Quilts and quilter Victoria Findlay Wolfe whose neighborhood was devastated by the storm, is coordinating a quilt drive on her blog.

All of us at Quilts are getting so excited about the upcoming show in just two short weeks! We are busy packing more than 1000 quilts, countless signs, show programs, totes, badges, ATCs, fabric postcards, t-shirts, books (you name it, we are packing it) to get ready to move into the George R. Brown Convention Center next week.

In getting ready for Festival, I have decided I am going to pack up my sewing machine and studio supplies to schlep to my hotel room so at night I can make more fabric postcards for our Festival Pet Project Fundraiser as well as ATCs for our Trading Post!

Pet Postcard Update

Speaking of our Pet Postcard fundraiser (and if you don’t know what I am talking about, all of the information is here), we are still accepting fabric postcards in our offices through Tuesday, October 23, and if you are coming to Festival we will accept them at the show through Saturday, November 3. Simply bring them to Room 213. Please note: the Pet Postcards will be on sale at Quilt Festival, not Quilt Market.
I thought I would share a few of my own fabric postcards that I have made thus far. (I still plan to make 50 total!)

My little Min Pin, Louie, has a big ego…

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I mean, for real…he has a big ego. Did you ever see the movie “Goodfellas?” Remember Tommy DeVito, the character played by Joe Pesci? If Louie was a human, he would be him.

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My kitty Khaleesi, who has been exploring her playful side and stretching her physical boundaries lately, inspired this yoga postcard.

We are so excited to have a much larger and expanded version of Open Studios this year, and in the food court area where people can relax and spend time with the artists. During Festival, there will be approximately 60 sessions with more than 40 artists who will be demonstrating their craft and sharing their expertise with attendees. This event, brought to you by Craftsy.com, will have a variety of artists on hand demonstrating everything from free-motion embroidery and piecing to monoprinting and embellishment. I will post the full artist schedule in the next couple of days, so you can print it out and plan your visit to this area.

New: Mix and Mingle Reception!

We hope you’ll join us on Saturday (November 3) for an evening of fun! We’re hosting a new event, MIX ‘N MINGLE from 5:30-7:00 p.m. in the pre-function area, outside of the ballrooms on the third floor. No pre-enrollment is required, all show attendees are invited. What better way to wrap up your day than spending time with old friends (and making new ones!), talking about your day, unwinding, and enjoying refreshments from the nearby cash bar. And best of all…we’ll be giving away hundreds of dollars in door prizes!
More information to come shortly, but I have a date in my studio tonight to make more fabric postcards!

Things have gotten down right cat-ty here at Quilts Inc. headquarters as we have received more than 170 fabric postcards so far for our Festival Pet Project Fundraiser, some of which feature the feline variety!

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The above three funny feline fabric postcards were humorously painted and stitched by Sandra Gray.

Norma Schlager stitched this cute kitty!

Another fabric postcard by Sarah Anne Smith (who will be teaching in Open Studios…more on that soon)!

And Jeannie Palmer Moore painted and quilted this charming tabby.

We are aiming to at least receive and sell 500 fabric postcards, so we hope that many of you are planning to act as cat-alysts to our cause, and help us help these animals from suffering cat-aclysmic fates by stitching up some postcards this weekend. Am I putting you in a fit of cat-aplexy with my play on words?! Stop your cat-erwauling. ;-)